Modern Slavery Statement
This statement is made pursuant to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes Solmar Villa Holidays slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 December 2024.
About Us
Solmar Villa Holidays is one of 7 specialist companies operating independently within DERTOUR UK Group. Solmar Villas Limited is a tour operator. For over 30 years, we have designed tailor-made holidays around the world and have firmly established a reputation as the UKs leading villa holiday specialist. We work with numerous suppliers including villa owners, destination handling agents, car rental companies and airlines. Solmar Villas Limited is committed to act with integrity in all our business dealings, to be a responsible business that treats all people with dignity and respect. At Solmar Villas Limited, we strive to have a sustainable social and environmental impact at home and the regions we operate. It is central to our business strategy and company ethos, that we adopt and actively encourage sustainable practices and promote responsible tourism.
We recognise the responsibility we share with our suppliers to operate ethically. Promoting decent working conditions in our supply chains is part of our strategy to act in a socially responsible manner.
Solmar Villas Limited is part of DERTOUR Group and our supply chains are:
- Accommodation Providers: Sourcing product and in resort services
- Transport and Travel Operators: Airlines, car rental and transfers
- Destination Services Providers: Employment of resort teams
- Cleaning and Maintenance Contractors: For villas
- Technology and Software Providers: Reservation systems, travel booking platforms, data management companies and marketing agencies
- Uniform and Merchandise Suppliers: For staff uniforms, branded items, and promotional goods.
Solmar Villas Limited has set up the formal structures and procedures to ensure we mitigate the risk of infringing on human rights and modern slavery breaches and that if any do occur, there is a process in place in which to deal with and eliminate the risk. This also ensures that we can review how risks occur and restructure our procedures to minimise the risk occurring again. We have implemented a Supplier Code of Conduct this year, which highlights our zero-tolerance stance on human rights, modern slavery and violating the protection of children.
Definition
Modern Slavery is a broad term used to encompass the offences of slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking. The term extends to slavery-like practices such as debt bondage, sale or exploitation of children and forced or servile marriage. While varied in nature, all involved one person depriving another of their liberty to exploit them for personal or commercial gain. We are committed to ensuring that we are not engaged or complicit in the exploitation of people and to play our part in helping to eradicate Modern Slavery.
Transparency
Solmar Villas Limited have had no cases of modern slavery risks reported to us in the year 2024 so have not had to act in response to said risks. This is the first year we reported on our efforts against Modern Slavery and will continue this process annually, archiving our statements to ensure we can hold ourselves accountable. In our activities as a tour operator, we work for and with people: customers, staff, local representatives and the local populations in the destinations we operate in. We do not tolerate any form of slavery or human trafficking in our operations and supply chain and outlined below is our commitment to ensuring they have no place in our business. With the aim of preventing violations, minimising them and taking remedial action, we ask all our service providers to comply with the requirements and obligations of the DERTOUR SCoC: https://www.dertour-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/DERTOUR-Group_SCoC-2.0_ENG_final.pdf. This states that there should be no form of forced labour or violation of basic human rights, that they provide a safe and hygienic working environment, wages must meet or exceed legal minimum and/or industry standards with no illegal or unauthorised deductions from wages, working hours of employees must be in line with legal and/or industry requirements and that they do not allow or tolerate any child prostitution at premises and facilities.
Solmar Villas Limited works closely with its villa owners, agents and ground agent partners to make them aware of the code and encourages them to do their utmost to ensure compliance with anti-slavery and human trafficking measures.
The senior management team at Solmar Villas Limited will not hesitate to act if any supplier is in breach of the code of conduct, which will include removing villas, agencies and agents from sale and/or reporting them to the relevant authorities. Our working practices respect and uphold human rights for our employees, suppliers and business partners. Solmar Villas Limited provides all staff with ethical behaviour guidelines for all within the DERTOUR UK Group. We expect all staff to maintain high standards in accordance with the set ethical values and to report any wrongdoing that falls short of these fundamental principles via a dedicated digital compliance system https://rewe-group.reporting-channel.com/.
We are committed to providing training via The Code to all our employees. This ensures that all our staff are suitably trained on the prevention of modern slavery and human trafficking and are equipped with the necessary information and understanding on how to prevent and eliminate the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism. We will continue to report on our engagement on this in our future annual statements. This aligns with our internal KPIs to measure the effectiveness of this training amongst our employees and how it supports our Supplier Code of Conduct to assist in making the travel and tourism industry a safe place to work for all.
Approved and signed by Sales & Marketing Director on behalf of Solmar Villas Limited – 11th Feb 2025